Charvaka, Lokayata, the Materialist, and Secularist
© Domenic Marbaniang, Secularism in India, Google Books, 2005. The Indian school of materialism, Charvaka, perhaps developed as a reaction against the excesses of Brahmin priests and an exploitative society. It dismissed ‘necessarily all belief in everything that constitutes the specific subject-matter of religion and philosophy.’ It had place for neither God who controls the universe nor conscience that guides man. The absence of the transcendent in Charvaka might be reason for its also being called as Lokayata-darsana, meaning philosophical school ‘restricted to the experienced world,’ or ‘secular.’ The Charvaka had no regard for the Shabda Pramana (Verbal Testimony, i.e., the Vedas). It had a purely empirical and rational concept of reality. However, the Charvaka could not gain political approval and so gradually declined – although its hedonism vented out through popular polytheism. Charvaka philosophy could not continue also because of the powerful dominance of Brahmanism over